SXSW: Get Ready to Rock

by Jordan Yerman | March 9, 2007 at 08:27 am

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The South by Southwest festival is beginning, and I'm hoping that some of you NPers are down there... Let us know what's next for film and music. SXSW really made a name for itself as the first major film festival with a digital focus, long before major motion pictures were shot on anything other than celluloid. Also big down there is user-generated content, dot dot dot. We've come a long way, baby.

The burgeoning city of Austin blows open its doors on Friday for its annual media convergence megafest. Over the next 10 days, this vibrant cultural blip in the heart of Texas will host tens of thousands in the first carbon-neutral incarnation of the 21-year-old South by Southwest. Yee-haw.

The three-pronged music, film and interactive components of the festival offer an endless panoply of panels, performances and parties that even New York and Los Angeles would be hard pressed to match. There's more than 150 panels, 200 films and 1,400 music acts at some 60 venues.

This year, SXSW is taking advantage of the growing trends of user-generated content. Conference organizers literally turned over panel selection to the community: Visitors to the SXSW website could vote on event topics and suggest speakers through an automated tool.

I am not affiliated with SXSW, but I am a fan of digital filmmaking.